My son M has 2 Balinese cats. He was promised rabbits when we moved to Switzerland. The back corner of the house next to the trampoline has been reserved for the rabbit hutch. But then we spoke to our neighbours who pointed out the fox problem. Oh yes the foxes! One year they even made a den with their young kits underneath the pool decking. Even if we completely enclose the rabbit hutch, the stress on the rabbits with the foxes spreadeagled on the chicken wire is enough to give them a heart attack. So Plan B was cats. Except their father P is allergic to cats. But M wasn’t deterred. He researched and found out that two cat breeds are deemed hypo-allergenic – the Sphinx and the Balinese. There was no way his father was paying for a cat that looks like ‘raw meatloaf’! So Balinese it is. A breeder was found. A molly was pregnant and due soon. A few weeks later, we went to choose a kitten from a litter of 3. The female was already reserved so it was a choice of the 2 males. An hour of cooing over the impossibly cute kittens and we seemed to have left having reserved BOTH! I suppose a situation that only a cat lover would understand.
M named them Misu and Mono. Not a fan of the second name so I shortened it to Mon. He’s also much lighter that Misu that for a while I called him Tofu. Miso and Tofu. What a pair!
We’ve never looked back. The cats are now 6 year olds and rule the roost. It was too expensive to create a cat flap with the triple glazed doors and windows as after cutting the glass, the gases trapped between the panes have to be piped back in. So we open doors. We open doors all day, late into the night and early in the morning. We trip the alarm so often at the sight of cold cats standing on their hind legs begging to be let in. What’s the saying “A cat is always on the wrong side of the door”? Yep. Sometimes I hear P screaming at the cats when he’s had enough as unofficial doorman sans uniform. But the next moment, I would hear the tenderest German reserved only for the cat inhabitants of the house peppered with cooing “Schatzi…”.
Misu loves the snow more than Mono. He sniffs the cold air through the open door and bravely saunters out. His paw prints would dot the freshly laden snow. Meanwhile Mono sniffs the cold air and does a sort of backward hip wiggle limbo that says “I’ve changed my mind”. Any encouragement with a socked foot on his behind just meets resistance and if he’s not in the mood, even a nip as if to say “I said NO!!!” The cats paw at bedroom doors during the night which is not compatible to cheery humans in the morning. So we put the cats outside before going to bed. In winter, we check the temperature. If it hovers around freezing, they’re out. We remind them “You have a fur coat! Out!”
They also a cat ‘hotel’ which I’ve put together in a protected doorway to the patio. Between the glass door and the insect screen, I’ve parked the cat carrier stuffed with a cushion and a folded warm blanket. The carrier is covered with another blanket and topped with a sheepskin. A plastic sheet and thin cushions on the screen side insulates the setup from the cold wind. I find them there most mornings – Mono inside the carrier and Misu on the sheep skin. Rarely do they switch.
But when overnight temperatures go down to -8C (18F), we’ll keep them in. That means door duties for me from around 3am when the cats want to go out. It means sleepwalking to turn off the alarm, holding the door freezing in my pyjamas while the cats saunter ever so leisurely out the door. They stay out until the house stirs at 6am. After a quick meal and drink, they find the warmest spot in the house to thaw. Mono’s is stretched along the side of the toasty wood-burning fireplace. Misu’s is the bathroom, warm and steaming from somebody’s shower.
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